Raised immune-cell activity and gut immunity in healthy adults who ate it daily
Human trialLentinula edodes
Shiitake
Farmed on logs for a thousand years, now one in four of the world's cultivated mushrooms, and studied by immunologists since the 1960s.
Overview
One in every four cultivated mushrooms on earth is a shiitake.
Shiitake takes its name from the shii tree, Castanopsis cuspidata, a relative of the oak and the sweet chestnut: shii for the tree, take for mushroom. In the forests of East Asia it fruits on fallen trunks of shii, oak and beech, a broad brown cap over white gills, the cap often cracking into a pale, flower-like pattern as the air dries.
It lives entirely on dead wood, which is why people learned to farm it so early: supply the right logs and it will grow. Chinese woodcutters were doing so around a thousand years ago. In the kitchen it is rich, smoky and savoury, and stronger still when dried. In the laboratory it has been a subject of medical research since 1969.
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1,000years
of cultivation, since Song-dynasty China, when woodcutters learned to bring it out of felled logs.
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1 in 4
of the world's cultivated mushrooms is a shiitake: more than 11 million tonnes a year.
-
28million years
since the common ancestor of the shiitake genus, which a 2023 genome study traced across every continent except Europe and Antarctica.
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1969
the year Japanese scientists published the first of the studies that made shiitake a subject of medical research, in Nature.
Its other names
Shiitake means “shii-tree mushroom”. Many books translate it as “oak mushroom”, but the shii is a cousin of the oak, not an oak itself.
Xiang gu
“Fragrant mushroom”
China
Donko
“Winter mushroom”
Japan
Huagu
“Flower mushroom”
China
Benefits
What it's studied for
- Human trial 3
- Animal 1
- Lab and animal 1
- Lab 1
Lowered blood triglycerides in adults with borderline-high levels
Human trialReduced plaque and gum inflammation as a mouth rinse
Human trialLowers cholesterol, through a compound that works differently from statins
AnimalFeeds beneficial gut bacteria
Lab and animalStops the growth of bacteria and yeasts, including Candida
LabTradition
History of use
Shiitake has been a food, a gift and a crop for longer than almost any other mushroom.
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Japanaround 200
Japanese tradition records shiitake presented to the emperor as an offering, around the year 200.
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Chinaaround 1000 to 1100
A woodcutter named Wu San Kwung is credited with working out how to grow shiitake on felled logs, and that soaking and striking the logs brought on a fresh crop. Temples in China honour him, and his work is celebrated with an annual feast day. By the early 13th century the method was written down in Longquan, in today’s Zhejiang.
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Ming dynasty1368 to 1644
Chinese writers described shiitake as a general stimulant, a remedy for colds and an aid to the circulation.
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Japan1874
The British consul in Japan listed shiitake among the country’s exports. A few years later the British mycologist Miles Berkeley gave it its first scientific name, from a specimen bought in Japan.
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Japan1942
The agricultural scientist Kisaku Mori developed spawn-plug inoculation: drill a log, tap in wooden pegs colonised by the fungus, and wait. Log growers still use the method today.
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Japan1969
Researchers in Tokyo reported in Nature that polysaccharides from shiitake acted through the body’s defences. Within a year they had isolated the most active of them, lentinan.
Key active compounds
What's inside the mushroom
Polysaccharides
Lentinan
Lentinan is shiitake's signature beta-glucan: a backbone of glucose with two short side branches for every five links, which coils into a triple helix. It works through the immune system, binding receptors on macrophages and monocytes, which then rally other immune cells.
It became a licensed injectable immune therapy in Japan, and in mice, lentinan taken by mouth is picked up by immune tissue in the wall of the gut. It is also sensitive to heat, which is one reason shiitake should always be cooked.
Alkaloids
Eritadenine
Shiitake is the richest known source of eritadenine, a compound built on adenine, one of the building blocks of DNA. Eritadenine blocks an enzyme called S-adenosylhomocysteine hydrolase, and in rats a diet containing just 0.005% of it cut cholesterol by a quarter in a week, by a different route from statins.
Levels vary widely between strains, and some carry up to ten times more than earlier measurements suggested.
Aroma
Lenthionine
The smell of dried shiitake is lenthionine, a ring of five sulphur atoms and two carbons that forms as the mushroom dries, which is why dried shiitake tastes stronger than fresh. A 2023 genome study identified the two enzymes behind its formation. In the laboratory, lenthionine stops yeasts and moulds at concentrations comparable to established antifungal drugs.
Antioxidants
Ergothioneine and vitamin D
Mushrooms are the richest food source of ergothioneine, an antioxidant amino acid that only fungi and some bacteria can make, and shiitake is a good source. The human body absorbs it through a dedicated transporter. Shiitake also carries ergosterol, which sunlight turns into vitamin D2.
- Eritadenine at 0.005% of the diet, one week 75
- Usual diet 100
Sugiyama et al., Journal of Nutrition, 1995.
Selected research
The research
Shiitake has been a subject of medical research since 1969. The human trials below are the closest to how people eat or take it: whole shiitake, or an extract of it, every day.
1995
Hypocholesterolemic action of eritadenine is mediated by a modification of hepatic phospholipid metabolism in rats
Fed rats eritadenine.
Cholesterol fell, through changes in how the liver handles fats.
2009
An examination of antibacterial and antifungal properties of constituents of shiitake (Lentinula edodes) and oyster (Pleurotus ostreatus) mushrooms
Tested a shiitake water extract against 39 bacteria, yeasts and moulds.
It inhibited 85% of them.
2011
Testing a low molecular mass fraction of a mushroom (Lentinus edodes) extract formulated as an oral rinse in a cohort of volunteers
90 young volunteers rinsed with a shiitake extract, water or Listerine for 11 days.
Less plaque than with water, and less gum inflammation than with either water or Listerine.
2015
Consuming Lentinula edodes (shiitake) mushrooms daily improves human immunity: a randomized dietary intervention in healthy young adults
52 healthy adults ate 5 or 10 g of dried shiitake a day for four weeks.
Immune cells multiplied more readily, the gut's protective antibody (sIgA) rose, and CRP, a marker of inflammation, fell.
2021
Effects of shiitake culinary-medicinal mushroom, Lentinus edodes, bars on lipid and antioxidant profiles in individuals with borderline high cholesterol: a double-blind randomized clinical trial
68 adults with borderline-high cholesterol ate shiitake cereal bars daily for 66 days.
Triglycerides fell by 10%, alongside better antioxidant status.
2024
Insights into oral lentinan immunomodulation: Dectin-1-mediated lymphatic transport from Peyer's patch M cells to mononuclear phagocytes
Gave mice lentinan by mouth.
Immune tissue in the gut took it up through the Dectin-1 receptor.
The 2015 trial compared two doses without a placebo group, and the mouth-rinse trial used a purified fraction of the extract.
Good to know
Always cook shiitake. Raw or undercooked shiitake can cause shiitake dermatitis, a striking whip-like rash that appears a day or two later and usually clears within a couple of weeks. Avoid shiitake if you have a mushroom allergy or have reacted to it before. In one small study, daily shiitake powder raised a type of white blood cell (eosinophils) in half the volunteers, which settled when they stopped. Dried shiitake is high in purines, so take care if you have gout, and if you take blood-thinning medication, are pregnant or breastfeeding, or are awaiting surgery, check with your doctor first.
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References
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